Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I will also keep my contribution today brief. The Greens will be supporting the Treasury Laws Amendment (Making Sure Multinationals Pay Their Fair Share of Tax in Australia and Other Measures) Bill 2019. I would also like to put a bit of history on record today. Given that we have so many new senators in this chamber, I thought it was worth highlighting that it was the Greens who initiated the first groundbreaking Senate inquiry, in 2014-15, into making multinationals pay their fair share of tax. I'd like to acknowledge my previous Senate colleague and Leader of the Australian Greens, Christine Milne, who was a driving force behind getting up this Senate inquiry. That inquiry delivered some amazing results not just for the two chambers in this parliament but also for the Australian people. We drove that inquiry. We went all around the country and we heard from hundreds of experts. Working with great people from within the department and even businesses and other stakeholders out in the civil society, such as Micah Challenge, we managed to deliver some changes.

It might seem nuanced when Labor get up in this place and say that they had never voted against the MAAL, the multinational anti-avoidance laws. Let me make it very clear that Labor campaigned very hard against that legislation. The Greens voted with the Liberal government to bring in that legislation—and thank God we did! Had we not brought that in by 30 December of that year not only would we have seen a number of big tax-dodging multinationals avoid disclosing new information that was essential in prosecution but it also allowed us to bring in billions of dollars in revenue for the Australian people. That would not have happened had that legislation not been supported.

You will have to ask the Labor Party why they campaigned so hard against that legislation, given that it made perfect sense. I remember former senator Sam Dastyari—who I actually have a lot of time for and worked very hard with on a number of committees—putting up a billboard in Sydney that Christmas saying that the Greens had voted against tax transparency, because of an amendment that happened to be tacked onto that bill that we didn't agree with. So there you go, if ever you wanted an example of how cynical politics can be. This chamber did a fantastic thing. The Greens worked constructively with the government to get very important laws in place that have, to this day, continued to allow the Australian Taxation Office to go after big international tax dodgers.

I want to make one other point before I conclude my contribution today. This bill seems very straightforward, though it's reasonably technical, including for those of us who spend time poring through these documents. But I do want to say something in relation to the section on thin capitalisation. This is something that we had been talking about for some time. It's been tried overseas, and it has been looked at by a number of countries, including the OECD and various groups that have looked at better information sharing and putting in place standard rules between countries. So the principle is a very good one. I also want to highlight the idea that companies would need to use their audited assets and liabilities data, which of course helps us determine their leverages and whether they are unduly claiming excess interest deductions on debt that's not reasonable. That does rely on a level of integrity at the audit level for these large corporations.

The Greens were very happy to support the Labor Party's referral to the Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services recently—an inquiry which is reporting by 1 March 2020, next year, on the regulation of auditing in Australia, with particular reference to the relationship between auditing and consulting services and potential conflicts of interest, other potential conflicts of interest, the level and effectiveness of competition in audit and relating consulting services and so on and so forth. Indeed, there are 12 various terms of reference that will go into some detail, looking very closely at the big four accounting firms, in particular, and the services they provide both to the federal government and to big corporations.

So it's very important that the Senate continues to do its great work that I have been here to witness in the last seven years looking at the financial services industry. I am very pleased we have another piece of legislation before us today that's going to help the government crack down on multinational tax avoidance. But I urge all senators to pay particular attention to and show interest in this joint parliamentary inquiry that's coming up. The big four auditors are being looked at very closely. Overseas, particularly in the UK, there have been a number of startling recommendations in relation to breaking up the power of big audit companies. We have to be very, very confident that the audited assets and liabilities, for example, on the balance sheets of companies that we are going to be using around our tax laws are actually fair and reasonable estimates and that there are no conflicts of interest that could possibly distort those. I conclude my contribution.